Interesting, I wasn’t aware that Wales was historically disunited like that, but I suppose that other than the location, having a different language and one of the more interesting flags, I dont know a ton about it. I suppose I just assumed that it was a singular kingdom before being invaded by the English at some point.

I sometimes wonder why that isnt just “New Wales”. Is there something so distinct about the south of Wales that makes it be seen as something distinct to name something after?

Depends on how literally you mean it, in general, those most likely to say it wont think that humans are literally designed not to die and only do so because someone made a mistake, but more that humans might be redesigned or modified not to (or at least not from biological aging). Not a hard to find sentiment if you hang out in spaces with transhumanists, but I find the ones that overlap with AI bros, that tend to have an attitude like “this will totally happen in my lifetime and with no effort because the AI singularity is going to come and give us everything in a few years” impossible to talk to, because all too often they will cite even the tiniest listed improvement in any AI system as proof that literally everything possible or impossible is about to happen and then insist you arent paying attention when you give them skeptcism.

Emotions aren’t entirely rational with a clearly thought out process to justify why one should feel them. In any case, its common enough for people to assign the general actions of people within a group to the group as a whole (which isnt really fair or a reflection of reality, but can be pragmatic at times and requires less thought and information than judging on an individual basis, so it makes sense that people’s brains are wired up to do it even if its not always desirable). This can get extended to the groups one is a part of oneself, to include those whose membership one did not choose. And the US at the moment has even worse than typical leadership, has a great deal of power for that leadership to abuse, still has free enough media for people within it to stand a good chance of knowing about at least some of it, and if youre here on lemmy youre probably running into people with a somewhat higher than normal awareness of a lot of the historical abuses previous Americans have perpetrated just because it leans left and anti-establishment and those things get talked about a lot in such spaces.

You misunderstand, I am not saying “make sure he spends it responsibly”. Nobody has has “made” him do this at all, and I didn’t advocate for a policy of doing so. What I’m saying is that I don’t think this particular use is worthy of condemnation the way his other actions are, because in the long run I think that this specific thing will end up benefiting people other than him no matter if he intends for that to happen or not (even if the American healthcare system prevents access, which I’m not confident it will do completely, not every country has that system, and it’s statistically improbable that the US will have it forever, and research results are both durable and cross borders). That sentiment isn’t saying that it excuses his wealth, just that I think people are seeing only the negatives in this merely because of the association with Altman’s name and ignoring the potential benefits out of cynicism. The concept is just as valid with him funding it as it would be had he been condemning it instead.

The response to something beneficial being only available to the rich shouldn’t be to avoid developing that thing, it should be to make it available to everyone. The failures of the US healthcare and economic systems don’t suddenly make developing new medical techniques a bad thing. Human augmentation is another issue from curing genetic disease, though I’d personally argue that wouldn’t be a bad cause either, with the same caveat about it availability. It at least has more potential to improve somebody’s life somewhere down the line than just buying a yacht with his ill gotten gains or some other useless rich person toy would.

I’m not sure I get the universal negativity to this. Like sure, Altman sucks as a person, and an individual having enough money to significantly bankroll research like this is a sign of an economic failure, but surely curing or preventing genetic disease is just about the most uncontroversial use human genetic modification could have?

This whole saga is like Trump found a cursed monkey’s paw and wished that the internet would believe he’s had sex with a consenting adult.

Im not saying the stereotype of “conservative people living in trailer park style homes” isn’t classist, I’m suggesting that actively spreading it might not have been the objective of the OP, and that them doing so might have been more a case of not thinking through all the implications of what they were saying than an actual antipathy for people who live in cheap housing. I do realize its problematic even if so, I’ve spent a portion of my childhood in a place like that myself, I just felt a bit uneasy seeing some people here appear to assume the worse interpretation was the intended one when it still seemed ambiguous to me which it was, and that discomfort made me a bit defensive about it.

This may be a naivety of mine, but I struggle to communicate myself a lot and as a result I tend to look for the most benign intent that could lead to a given statement and assume that one until proven otherwise, because whenever I end up being the person phrasing something poorly or in a way that causes offense, it feels a lot easier to handle and address when people calmly point out what is wrong with it and why than when people jump on it as proof of a character flaw, and it’s very easy to project one’s own struggles and modes of thinking onto other people one runs across, I guess. I’m probably overthinking it all.

If one wanted a generous interpretation, it could be pointing out the irony in a poor person advocating for the interests of the rich that keep people like themselves in that position.

Tbf, the 10% that are real people still would represent more people than the handful of people I both know and can easily reach to talk to outside. And even then, what about when one gets home? Can’t stay out all the time

Oh it wasnt my intention to make it sound like climate change doesnt negatively impact anything, but “these things get more expensive” is a very different thing than “these crops are going extinct and theres nothing that can be done about it” the way that headline seems to imply.

Even fusion constrains you to the limits of the rocket equation. Laser sails on the other hand, could let you put the bulk of your propulsion system in orbit of the sun or something where you don’t have to carry it with you.

Honestly the newest version of them does look kind of cool, though maybe it’ll get stale once they’re like 10 years old and everywhere.

That’s not what that seems to say at all. It doesn’t even look like it says “if we do nothing, we can’t grow these crops anymore”. It seems to be specifically about stratospheric aerosol injection (a specific geoengineering technique that we haven’t even committed to trying as yet), and suggests that if you use it to keep global temperatures stable, there can still be changes in where these crops can grow because changes to things like rainfall and humidity. I’ve not read the entire thing but from a glance at it’s conclusions, their simulations suggest that the crops would remain economically important to their growing regions under all their simulations, just with the viable amount that can be grown and the specific areas for doing it changed per region, and that using SAI to offset warming doesn’t simply result in the same yields as not having the warming would have the way one might otherwise expect.

Microbes are still made of chemicals, it’s just different chemicals

Feel like God would have fit this sentiment better. There’s a decent amount of historical evidence for Jesus himself to my understanding (not the supernatural stuff attributed to him so much, but moreso that there was a guy the various stories were based off of). But an actual benevolent diety would probably make for a more pleasant world than what we have to deal with, probably why so many people care so strongly about the idea and want to believe it I’d imagine.

That’s another take of mine tbh, if clothes hold obnoxiously visible wrinkles, the fabric is too stiff to be comfortable in my view anyway. I try to avoid buying and wearing anything that needs to be ironed if I can get away with it.

Folding laundry is a complete waste of time and effort. If it’s been through the wash it’s clean, it’s not going to be any cleaner just because you spent half an hour doing laundry origami.

I don’t eat meat at all anymore, but growing up, whenever we had steaks I would always prefer it well done. It wasn’t really that I enjoyed it that way though, just that I did not like the flavor and texture of steak even cooked perfectly, my father did and kept making me eat it, and cooking it to a crisp and then covering it with ketchup and paprika was a way to make it not taste like steak anymore.